Sample text from the Online World Monitor newsletter
ISSN: 0805-6315. April 1995. (C) by Odd de Presno, Norway.
Links are not maintained! Check
the handbook for current links.
On April 22, the
clari.world.asia.india newsgroup
brought a story from Associated Press titled "Cyberspace Catches On In India."
Highlights:
-
A 110-year-old law leaves the government in control of all channels of overseas
communications. Regulations require Indians to get licenses for computer
modems, and any other communication device except a standard telephone from
the state-owned phone company.
 Enforcement is lax. Indians
routinely ignore the rules. Computer users are beginning to find ways to
hook into the Internet.
-
Access to the Internet is limited. Some Indians dial in through accounts
in Singapore or Hong Kong. The high cost of international calls means no
one can spend much time accessing the databases.
-
Twenty computer bulletin board services in India offer e-mail, news, shopping
for computer gizmos and even games.
-
To keep things under its control, the state's Overseas Communications Co.
is buying a computer that will give Indians a gateway to the Internet for
a fee.
The Clari hierarchy of newsgroups on Usenet is available for a fee. If you
are not a subscriber, pointing your news reader at
clari.world.asia.india will give
an error message. The news mainly comes from Associated Press and Reuters.
For more on the growing
Indian online scene, read this Web page:
http://spiderman.bu.edu/misc/india/misc/on-line.html (link defunct)
According to the CIA World
Factbook: The Indian domestic phone system is poor providing only one telephone
for about 200 persons on average. Long distance telephoning has been improved
by a domestic satellite system.
In the news: "The Indian
Government slashes import duties on information technology products and provides
tax breaks for the IT industry. This should help create a better atmosphere
for India to establish itself as a 'world IT superpower.'" (Express Computer,
India; April 3, 1995)
India - What is?
India is on the edge of an economical upturn. The Asian Development Bank
forecasts a 6.1 percent growth in GNP this year, and another 6.5 percent
in 1996 (April 95).
The CIA World Factbook
says it had over 903 million people (July 1993) on a land area slightly more
than one-third the size of the US. Only China has a larger population.
India has the fourth-largest
reserves of coal in the world. They also have iron ore, mica, manganese,
bauxite, chromite, diamonds, petroleum, natural gas, titanium ore, and limestone.
55 percent of the land
is arable. 67 percent of the 285 million+ labor force works in agriculture.
They fight a rough environment with droughts, flash floods, severe thunderstorms
are common, deforestation, soil erosion, overgrazing, air and water pollution,
and desertification.
English is the most important
language for national, political, and commercial communication. Hindi is
the national language and primary tongue of 30% of the people.
Other languages include
Bengali, Telugu, Marathi, Tamil, Urdu, Gujarati, Malayalam, Kannada, Oriya,
Punjabi, Assamese, Kashmiri, Sindhi, Sanskrit, Hindustani, and others. India
has 24 languages each spoken by a million or more persons, and numerous other
languages and dialects.
Total population literacy
is at 48 percent. A large part of the population, perhaps as much as 40%,
remains too poor to afford an adequate diet.
Search the CIA World Factbook
for more on India:
http://www.nexial.nl/cgi-bin/cia
The India Home page
There are no official Indian Web home pages within the country's borders.
Most sites offer gopher information only, and you may find the connection
intolerably slow most of the time.
The ERNET Network Information
Centre's gopher is at
gopher://ece.iisc.ernet.in/1.
Outside India, there are several very interesting Web pages. However, there
is a high degree of duplication of links.
The largest collection
of links to India related information that I could find, is Sergio Paoli's
Web site in Argentina:
http://www.netverk.com.ar/~cloro/india.html
. Also, check out
http://webhead.com/WWWVL/India/.
The India Network and
Research Foundation (USA) offers detailed information about India, such as
tourism (including customs & baggage rules, clickable map, and images),
major news headlines, culture and fine arts, film music, recipes, sports
which include hockey, cricket and tennis. URL:
http://india.bgsu.edu/
It has links to Embassy
of India in Washington, DC (USA) resources, other Research Resources on India,
and several digests (on News, News and Discussion, Personal Network, Telugu,
Faculty).
Other want-to-be India
Home pages are at
http://www.mahesh.com/india/,
and http://spiderman.bu.edu/misc/india/index.html (defunct)
News
Sergio Paoli has
links to Headlines from newspapers, India news and Information, indian-news,
and india-news-network-digest.
The Hindu, a national
Indian newspaper, is experimenting with an online edition at
http://www.webpage.com/hindu.
Several other commercial news providers covers the area (see The Online World
resources handbook).
Networking
For a list of Internet access providers in India, point at
http://www.herbison.com/herbison/iap_meta_list_in.html
Sergio Paoli has
links to IRC #India pages. A small Urdu dictionary, and a list of hindu names
and their meanings, can be retrieved at
http://wiretap.spies.com/ftp.items/Library/Article/Language/ (Now defunct.)
For information about
the Global Hindu Electronic Network (GHEN), point your browser
here.
Business
Start with the report on Business Practices in India at
http://www.ait.ac.th/Asia/ibp/ibp-in
A report about India Economic
Policy and Trade Practices is at
gopher://UMSLVMA.UMSL.EDU/00/LIBRARY/GOVDOCS//CRPT/CRPT0039
India Online
(http://indiaonline.com/biz.html)
provides information about export/import offerings, joint ventures,
manufacturing, business services, buyers need, market news, and other business
opportunities offered by the newly liberated Indian Economy.
IndiaWorld delivers business
information at
http://www.indiaworld.com. The offering
includes Indian news, business and entertainment information, and even cartoons
by India's famous cartoonist R.K. Laxman. The Web server is based in the
U.S., since India "still needs a clear policy on commercial usage of the
Internet." Access is restricted to subscribers. Subscription costs USD 29
per year.
Sample links from IndiaWorld's
home page:
Business, Finance and Technology
[Indian Budget for 1995-96] [Company Profiles] [Market Watch]
[India Monitor] [Articles] [Express Investment Week] [Express Computer]
[Dataquest] [Voice and Data] [India Business Directory]
Travel
Start by checking out the US State Department Travel Advisories at
http://travel.state.gov/travel_warnings.html
Sergio Paoli spent
a considerable time planning for a visit to India in December last year.
Another good reason for a visit to his India page.
India Online has information
about travel related services and places of interest. Their travel guide
has tips, things to do, places to visit, means to travel etc.
To see pictures of India,
try http://www.cs.mcgill.ca/~arun/gifjpg.html
A travel agent survey
is posted monthly on many Indian related soc.culture groups. The most recent
version can be retrieved by electronic mail to
pkohli@prism.gatech.edu, and
at this Web address
http://www.cc.gatech.edu/grads/k/Prince.Kohli/Prince.Kohli.html
TravelASIA (Singapore)
offers India related information at
http://www.asia-online.com/travel/rsrc/in.html
Select "Travel Information"
for essential travel information such as climate, electricity and water,
public holidays, tipping, and check out their Indian Rupee link.
UNESCO's World Heritage
list points to special cultural and natural historic sites worth visiting
in India: http://www.unesco.org/whc/
You will also find the
following site interesting: http://www.cs.clemson.edu/~nandu/india.html
Here, information includes
movie, music, economy, recipes, graduate schools, languages, history, religions.
(The site is scheduled to move!)
Having fun
The India Humor home page is filled with jokes, cartoons, funny facts. Click
on the India map at this Web address for access:
http://www.indolink.com/IndiaTourism/map.html
India Online offers
information about Indian food, including listings of Indian Restaurants around
the world, recipes, etc:
http://indiaonline.com/food.html
Sergio Paoli has
many links to Indian art (including classical), culture and life, archives
of music and songs (including film music), galleries of Indian movie star
photographs, the Urdu Poetry Page, religion (Bhakti Yoga, Hinduism, Sai,
Sikhism). You name it.
Education/Research
According to the list at
gopher://soochak.ncst.ernet.in/00/ernetlist,
there are now 328 Indian sites addressable by email from outside India.
For a quick and easy list
of educational sites, check out
gopher://netlink.wlu.edu:1020/1in/ge%20-sa
Visiting
http://coombs.anu.edu.au/ may also
be useful.
Other foreign resources
A host in Thailand maintains links to "Infoservers in India"
http://emailhost.ait.ac.th/Asia/in.html
There are many India-related newsgroups, including:
When we visited misc.news.southasia
a few days ago, the list of Indian news stories included:
-
"India Headline News"
-
"Hundreds of pilgrims visit Hindu shrine"
-
"India to buy three cryogenic rocket engines from Russia"
-
"India - Appeasement policy caused ruling party debacle athustings"
-
"India - Tamil nadu claims lowest number of polio cases"
-
"India - UP police tampered with records, says CBI"
-
"Indo-British initiative in science and technology launched"
There are also several mailing lists, including:
By this time next year, expect many more Indian resources to be available
directly from the source. India seems ready to join the online world!
The Online World Monitor newsletter
The newsletter and the book were companions. While the book describes
the online world as it is, the newsletter tracked changes. It could more
freely focus on selected offerings or phenomena than could be done within
the strict framework of the book.
For more about the newsletter, see
monitor.html
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